dagblog - Comments for "Well, he did it."

Obama admin debates releasing

artappraiser — Tue, 11 Oct 2011 21:02:51 +0000

In reply to Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal

Obama admin debates releasing Awlaki memo
By Sr. State Dept. Producer Elise Labott & Sr. Producer Carol Cratty, CNN, Oct. 10, 2011

...The official said the memo was narrowly defined to apply to the case of al-Awlaki and not to offer a new, broad legal doctrine intended to justify the killing of any other Americans believed to pose a terrorist threat.

Another senior official said there is a debate within the administration about whether to disclose its legal rationale. Some are arguing for more disclosure, while others contend that, because the legal argument refers to covert actions that involve national security interests, it should not be disclosed, the official said....

My comment: Two senior producers are the authors of record here, that's highly unusual. The only really new thing in the article are the two paragraphs I quote; the rest is filler, a nice summary, but filler. That says to me that the "officials" contacting CNN were top level and wanted assurance that they would be quoted correctly.

On the anonymice: The

artappraiser — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:55:34 +0000

In reply to Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal

On the anonymice:

The Awlaki Memo Leak
By Nick Baumann, Mother Jones, Mon Oct. 10, 2011 2:15 PM PDT

[....]

There's a point to be made here—one that Wittes alludes to—about the Obama administration's attitude toward leaks of top-secret information. The Obama White House has been extremely harsh in its treatment of government whistleblowers and other spillers of government secrets. But when the government wants to brag about something secret to the press—say, the Awlaki killing, or the fact they targeted him in the first place—or explain its actions behind the shield of anonymity, the normal rules don't seem to apply. I asked the Justice Department on Monday morning if they plan to investigate the Awlaki memo leak, or if they could even tell me generally about which sorts of leaks they choose to investigate. I haven't heard back.

Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal

artappraiser — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 21:25:14 +0000

In reply to Well, he did it.

Secret U.S. Memo Made Legal Case to Kill a Citizen
By Charlie Savage, New York Times, October 8/9, 2011

A secret memo offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to the Obama administration’s decision to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen, in Yemen.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/09/world/middleeast/secret-us-memo-made-l...

The Kill or Capture List
By Raffaela Wakeman, Lawfare, October 6, 2011
I wanted to share this very interesting article, which discusses the National Security Council panel which decides who is placed on the “kill or capture” list. The process was revealed by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, the senior Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee:...

http://www.lawfareblog.com/2011/10/the-kill-or-capture-list/

Hey, Bruce, twice in one week

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 20:10:30 +0000

In reply to Hitchens corroborates what I

Hey, Bruce, twice in one week is also twice in five years, but what the heck, who's counting? Cheers.

You may not call it a

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 19:54:33 +0000

In reply to Hitchen's assertion that

You may not call it a rebuttal but but I see it as an attempt at one. Hitchen's conclusion:

"Those who share my alarm at the prospect of this, and of the ways in which it could be abused, are under a heavy obligation to say what they would do instead.",

implies that no one has offered other courses of action and that is obviously wrong but it is apparent that he wants readers to agree that we did what we had to do and so those who disagree are wrong. His notice of how his supported course of action "could be abused" when the argument is that that action was, in fact, just such a scary abuse, is just another attempt to muddy the picture.

Then we, I should say I, see him as miss characterizing the dilemma as to its very nature based on the level of threat that Alwaki posed.

"To phrase the essence of the problem succinctly, you are perhaps more likely, as a reader of this column, to be blown up at work or play, or on the way to work or play, by a “homegrown” or “lone-wolf” or “self-starter” fanatic using ....."

This is an attempt to hide the fact that you are even more likely to get struck by lightning out of the blue while treating the rattlesnake bite you just received. [Am I exaggerating? Not as much as Hitchens] He is, IMHO, attempting to over blow the necessity of tapping Alwaki first chance by saying that otherwise you might die. It is a hyping of the threat to justify a a controversial action.

Shortly after, Hitchens is linking to an article in a way that suggests Alwaki is a pimp when it seems from the article that there were only reports that he had used the services of prostitutes. It is unclear if he was actually charged with a crime in this instance either since the article only says that he avoided jail time. Then from the article:

"But FBI agents hoped al-Awlaki might cooperate with the 9/11 probe if they could nab him on similar charges in Virginia. FBI sources say agents observed the imam allegedly taking Washington-area prostitutes into Virginia and contemplated using a federal statute usually reserved for nabbing pimps who transport prostitutes across state lines." Emphasis added.

Lots of wiggle room there for people to take whatever suits them. An anonymous source reports an alleged minor [victim-less?] crime which was considered as an opening to use harsh charges in a way never intended for what Alwaki was alleged to have done. The authorities are cited as considering pumping up the charges so as to pressure someone who might help them make a case. Maybe the fact that they dropped the plan is an indication that even the exaggerated violations had too little merit to stand up in court and maybe they decided their was no case at that time to be made. Who knows? Hitchens? Dilemmas all around. Regardless, even though Hitchens links to the story so we can evaluate it for ourselves, his own use of it is just one more attempt to demonize Alwaki with unrelated and unsubstantiated allegations and insinuations. It is getting pretty damned common to throw in sexual deviance charges and innuendo as part of any high profile demonization campaign where personal feelings about the person might affect judgments of how they were treated by the law, or should I say, by the man.

Hitchens: "As we engage with the horrible idea that our government claims the right to add its own citizens to a death list that is compiled by methods and standards unknown, we must concede that no government on earth faces such a temptation to invoke what I suppose we could call a doctrine of pre-emptive self-defense. Those who share my alarm at the prospect of this, and of the ways in which it could be abused, are under a heavy obligation to say what they would do instead.

I don't concede for a moment that no government has been so tempted as that of the U.S. to employ pre-emptive actions against their own citizens who pose a threat to that government, real or only perceived, or even simply concocted for other reasons. Many other governments have been so tempted and have chosen actions which have often included torture and execution. I could sight as many stronger examples than that of the U.S. as there are countries in South and Central America just for a beginning. I would be with those citizens of those countries that no doubt felt that the best solution to their particular dilemma would have been their governments adherence to the rule of just laws.

And again, many have offered other courses of action that could have been taken instead of the one that was taken. And even for those who haven't offered a different answer because they don't know how they would have solved the dilemma, but who are aware that their government chose to do something that their conscience rejects and who then spoke up about it, suggesting that that is cowardice is a cheap shot regardless of who takes it.

Odd coincidence--I too just

artappraiser — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:48:49 +0000

In reply to lawfareblog.com , a blog

Odd coincidence--I too just found that site, last night. Didn't know it existed until now.

Even if you don't like the elite legal opinions being argued (and if you check the bios, they are some of the elite in this field at different institutions who got together to do the blog,) it's great, because they are tracking and linking to most of the important writing elsewhere on the topic!

Speaking of links and elite legal experts in this area, I should copy the comment here to I posted on the "the cheneys say" thread.

----------------------

Anyone interested in more sophisticated comparisons between Bush & Obama "war on terror" policy, I recommend following this guy's link, a comment I ran across on Yglesias' blog post on topic:

Saul Tannenbaum · Top Commenter · Cambridge, Massachusetts

The continuity of counter-terrorism policy from Bush to Obama was an ongoing theme of a conference called "Law, Security and Liberty after 9/11" at the Harvard Law School and featured John Brennan (on the record and taking questions) and a bevy of elite national security lawyers on panels.

It's safe to say that all the former Obama lawyers took exception to the notion that there was continuity and most of the former Bush lawyers insisted that there was. Jack Goldsmith went so far as to quote Glenn Greenwald to make his case.

Charlie Savage gave the closing keynote and he tried to put this in a larger framework. From his perspective, the difference between Bush and Obama was not so much outcome but process. While the Bush policies (before the Jack Goldsmith revolt) were based on the theories of the unitary executive and the commander and chief's war time authorities, the Obama administration has dismantled those justifications and put them back together with what they believe is a rigid adherence to the rule of law. That they come out in the same place is just a coincidence.

That line of reasoning is parallel to yours. A focus on who we really went to war with on 9/11 is part of that whole shift to sound footings for the various policies.

Not to pimp my own work, but I wrote up the conference here:

http://www.cctvcambridge.org/LawSecurityandLiberty

Charlie Savage has expanded his keynote to a $.99 Kindle single here:

http://www.amazon.com/Power-Wars-Unmasking-Deliberations-ebook/dp/B005OTY468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1317497820&sr=8-1

Yesterday at 12:38pm

Note that the Charles Savage Kindle single that he links to is titled

Power Wars: Unmasking National Security Legal Policy Deliberations Under Bush & Obama

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Hitchens corroborates what I

Bruce Levine — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:19:46 +0000

In reply to Hitchen's assertion that

Hitchens corroborates what I don't consider to be profound and is an effective refutation to what others on this thread-- beginning with the author of this blog post-- consider to be a black and white issue with no room for compromise or acknowledgement that this truly is a difficult area--both morally and as a matter of constitutional law.

I'm really pleased with this entire discussion thread, and I don't mind saying that over and over again--because it doesn't always work out this way. And, once again, kudos to Lulu for continuing to debate the way he has been debating. Lulu that's two compliments in a week from me for you. Don't get used to it!

Great find AD, thanks!

Bruce Levine — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:18:58 +0000

In reply to lawfareblog.com , a blog

Great find AD, thanks!

Hitchen's assertion that

artappraiser — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 18:00:36 +0000

In reply to Hitchens writes better than

Hitchen's assertion that those protesting the killing must say what they would have done instead is a weak rebuttal to arguments

I don't know if we read the same essay. I wouldn't call it a rebuttal. I see him saying it's a horrible dilemma and struggling with it through the essay (in an "on the one hand, on the other hand" manner) and concluding in the final paragraph that it's cowardly to just complain about it without offering an alternative. I basically read it as saying that those who are arguing trial in absentia are ok with him, but just ranting and saying we should do nothing about it is cowardly and not anymore a defense of our system than what was done.

A reminder that he was personally invested in the assassination fatwa against Salman Rushdie since day one, it is why Islamic radicalism became a cri de coeur to him beyond his dislike for religion. And yes, one could say the assassination order against al-Awlaki was like an assassination fatwa by a secular government; though it's unsaid, to me, this is clearly what is bothering him.. The thing is, though, al-Awlaki's speech was promoting (and perhaps guiding, we don't know for sure yet) assassination of civilian Americans, not like Rushdie, where the speech involved was not advocating violence but was considered blasphemy against a religion. And that al-Awlaki's main modus operandi was basically assassination fatwa, he was into promoting that it was okay with Allah for you to kill American civilians.

I myself, as pretty much a free speech absolutist, was kind of haunted by the comment on the New Yorker site which I quoted upthread that referenced the Rwandan genocide. And when Oxy Mora replied there with a comment about "yelling fire in a crowded theatre," it clarified for me why it was haunting me. People like to say we could have done more to prevent some of it. Well, anyone who has studied it knows one of the main things that would have helped would have been to bomb the radio stations and news printers and assassinate the speakers on the radio when they started crossing the line from ginning up hate against Tutsis to telling Hutus to rise up, get their knives and machetes and go kill Tutsis. And that is the reason no one did anything--that crossing the line space is real hard to find.

Hitchens essay reminded me of the Goya print from his "Disasters of War" titled "And Nothing Can Be Done About It." To me, Hitchens seems to be saying "I don't like this, but tell me, what else can be done about it?"

Preachers get to preach

A Guy Called LULU — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 17:01:12 +0000

In reply to Oh, I knew I was preaching to

Preachers get to preach whether they really believe or not and so do atheists whether verified or not. Relative to those stands, as opposed to a political position, I am firmly in the middle as an agnostic, but of coarse I preach too. Like a Vonnegut character said, "Lion's got to rest, bird's got to land, Man's got to say that he understand."
Being agnostic gives me a psychological self-defense in some situations where I get overtly preachy, which I think most anyone holding strong beliefs that are not shared by everyone around them tends to do at times. Maybe the internet makes that tendency too easy to give in to and to get too preachy too often. Very little is offered as a possibility to be considered but rather as a truth which should be self-evident. What is wrong with everyone else, anyway? My psychic defense I referred too is that I feel that I can attempt to challenge a Christian and to deliberately put them put them on the spot by asking what Jesus would do without setting myself up as a self-righteous hypocrite based on the fact that I too have so often "sinned" if I claimed to be under any religious obligation put forth by a personal God to do what Jesus would have done. But what the hell, not to put anyone on the spot now, especially myself, what's religion really got to do with all this anyway? Oh, yeah, I am the one who brought it up. My bad. At least this isn't a bar where they have rules against such breaches and often big stupid, also drunken, rednecked reasons to follow those rules. Usually it is smart to follow the rule in that situation even if Jesus wouldn't have. Cheers.